I just finished the book Behind Their Screens: What Teens are Facing (and Adults Are Missing) by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James. I read with interest at the end of chapter 6 where four teenagers, self-described as “liberal,” came together for a discussion about whether or not they should discuss politics with those who disagreed with them.
Two of them said there is much to be learned by engaging with those who see things differently, and the other two claimed exactly the opposite. The latter claimed you could never engage with such an “enemy” who would “deny your right to exist” and whose ideas “made me feel unsafe” and “hurt my mental health.” Such people were “bad” and beyond the pale. (The argument on many college campuses continues from there that such persons should be “canceled” and “de-platformed,” if at all possible.) The debate between these four liberal teenagers in this book got so heated (hot tears were shed and angry words exchanged) that the adults in charge had to shut it down. Emotionally, the teenagers were on the very edge of losing it – or had lost it – over politics.
You, gentle reader, might be surprised at such overheated political sociodrama. I am not. I have seen a few instances of high school students like this with my own eyes, and it is quite the spectacle. Let me explain.
This give a powerful and important insight into the mindset of a small percentage of highly-political and extremely online young (and not so young) people nowadays: the “woke.”
The hallmarks of such people: extreme sensitivity to “injustice” in society, judgmental and emotional claims to “accountability,” and language-policing and line-drawing of what is permissible or not – “this is acceptable, and that is not” – and the combination of strong peer pressure and intense public shaming, mostly in an online space, to advance a political position.
The persons engaging in these calls for “accountability” and “de-platforming” are usually young and female. But that is not always the case. In the overall population, there are not all that numerous. If you had 100 regular folk pulled off the street, only 2 or 3 would qualify as the “online woke” I refer to in this essay, but among young people on college campuses the number might rise to 7 or 8. But they more than make up for their low numbers by the amount of noise they make.
Yes, dear reader, this might sound abstract and hard to envision in real life. So let me show you a concrete example of this in action. It should clarify what I am trying to say.
Supposedly, the popular author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has made bigoted statements which were hostile to the transexual community. The reaction against Rowling, centered in online censure, has called for concerned supporters of trans rights to refuse to buy her books or see the movies, and to throw any of her materials into the trash and refuse to buy new ones. You use public opinion to punish Rowling for her views. Hold her “accountable” for her “unacceptable” views, until Rowling learns to “do better.”
Rowling has refused to apologize or recant her supposedly errant views.
In fact, I saw her post on Twitter in response, where so much of this takes place:
How about that for a – take your criticism and stick it in your ear – response?
Will Rowling survive crossing the “woke scolds” calling for her to be “canceled”?
If you lived inside of the online Twitter world of youth literature or LGBTQIA2S+-think, you would think not. The censure for Rowling is thick and heavy. But outside of that online filter bubble, very few are invested in that conversation, or even know it is happening. I care little at all about JK Rowling or transsexual politics. I look at some dense article about gender and/or trans culture – or complicated pronoun nomenclature schemes, enforced by a sort of “pronoun mafia” – or some other identity politics subtext, and I grow bored just reading the headline. It is a tempest in a teacup. There are a whole slew of way more important topics, in my opinion. This author of children’s books from England and her social media comments? I don’t care much.
Others do care. I discussed this issue with a few who are heavily online and plugged into trans issues, and they are sure J.K. Rowling will be “canceled” soon. “The anger against her is intense,” they inform me. “Everyone I know feels the same. J.K. Rowling’s reputation and book sales will suffer. You don’t understand how powerful and committed our movement is! And when it comes to threats which harm the safety of the trans community, there really can’t be any debate. Transphobia needs to be de-platformed. J.K. Rowling has got to go!” They hardly can conceive how anyone would think differently about Rowling. That is because inside their echo bubbles nobody thinks differently, and they make little effort to go outside of their in-group. And they are like 19-years old and lack life experience, and so see most everything in terms of black and white. You are either with them or against them.
As I see it, most older people know little or nothing about this fight between Rowling and her critics. I don’t know, and only time will tell what happens to her, but I suspect J.K. Rowling will be around and still selling Harry Potter books well into the future. There is a disconnect to how the world looks like from the Extremely Online “politically active” on social media, and those outside that bubble. Those outside the filter bubble vastly outnumber those inside the bubble. If the opposite were true, Bernie Sanders would be President, not Joe Biden. What you have here is insular thinking among a group of online partisans. The filter bubbles lead them to overestimate the popularity of their ideas. Twitter is not the real world.
For example, until very recently I did not even know this was a thing:
“Activists call for France to Pay Back Reparations for Slavery to Haiti”
Contemporary France pay money in response to bringing slaves to Western Hemisphere to Haiti centuries ago? For payments made to France later? I suspect most French citizens nowadays cannot locate Haiti on a map. Would reparations for Haiti be popular among social justice circles online? Sure. Chances of actual money being sent by the French to Haiti in real life? Just about zero.
“UN Human Rights Chief Calls for Reparations Over Racism”
The entire continent of Africa asking for reparations for the colonialism and slavery from the past? Money paid by Europeans to an contemporary Africa for the sins of long ago? The chances of this happening: just about zero. For a certain kind of person, slavery and colonization happened just yesterday, and it is a wound which they pick at and keep fresh. For most others this is history more than a few decades removed from us, and is receding fast into the background. This idea that billions or trillions of dollars should be given by the West to Africa to atone for the sins of the past is a conceit of the desperate to grasp at straws to improve an unhappy present. It is an enthusiasm of a certain political stance, a circle jerk of the Global South – or more accurately, a circle jerk of a few interested activists and professors. It might get some traction online with them, or a bit of air time at the United Nations or some African American studies department, but it is not going to happen in real life.
“Calls For Reparations to the Descendants of Slavery in USA”
Reparations by the American government for slavery? Cash payments to the slaves freed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, or at least to the family descendants of those slaves 150 years later? Chance of that happening? They are better than Haiti or the entire continent of Africa getting reparations, for sure. It might happen at a small scale in the most liberal parts of the USA. But a chance of happening at scale with the US federal government? Not too damn likely. African Americans looking to get cash from the government because of their great-grandfather being a slave? I would not hold your breath.
“‘Indigenous People’s Day’ to Replace ‘Columbus Day’”
I don’t really care about Columbus Day in the United States as a holiday, and never paid it much attention in the 55-years of my life – the arrival of Columbus to the Americans predates the United States by three centuries and is more of a Latin American thing, as I see it, or an Italian-American thing. But plenty on the cultural left hate Columbus Day and decry Christopher Columbus as the harbinger of genocide and oppression, with little else left to add to the mix. So they would replace Columbus Day with “Indigenous People’s Day,” and in some places have been successful. But the arrival of Columbus was the beginning of modern America, with all the good, bad, and ugly in the last five centuries of history in the Western Hemisphere – and I like modern America, all in all. And I don’t appreciate using history as a political football in this way, so I will continue to mostly ignore Columbus Day but contemn “Indigenous Peoples Day.” I will just shake my head whenever I hear of it.
But more to the point: Any chance of Native Americans getting large tracts of “stolen” land back from “settlers” anywhere in the United States? It might happen in some online liberal filter bubble, but not too damn likely to take place in the real world. Anything else is just wishful thinking. They are like these land acknowledgements, which make a condescending statement without actually doing anything. They are insipid, stupid – “performative politics.” I will never witness a land acknowledgement without shaking my head with contempt (and I’ve only witnessed one in person, thankfully).
I suspect land acknowledgements will go the way of “Latinx” — another pretentious annoying affectation which the the convinced cultural Left insists be used but has failed to catch on — and never will. I have never heard a native Spanish-speaker say “Latinx” in real life. I suspect I never will. They don’t speak that way in Latin America or Spain. It are predominantly of the English-speaking ideological Left in liberal deep-blue corners of the United States — teachers and professors, journalists and activists; and the young “woke” around them — who use it. Nobody else.
But if you live in such a deep-blue milieu in America, or find yourself in an online silo populated almost entirely by other “woke,” you might think “Latinx” is a new social norm. It isn’t.
“‘Decolonize’ Your Library, Your Mind, and Your Country”
I have seen a certain kind of online persona claim they don’t live in the United States of America – they live in occupied land taken over by “settlers” from Europe and elsewhere. (Yes, these are the types who hate “Columbus Day.”) I have heard them urge you to “decolonize” your mind, your library, your country, and the world. Are we going to turn back the clock to before 1493? Reject the “settler” and embrace the “indigenous”? Bring back a primitive paradise of traditional native societies in the mid-21st century? Turn our backs on modern America? Not too damn likely. But that is what they want, because of this simple fact: these people dislike the United States. They would reject it, or change it utterly, if they could. Well, consider that you live in whatever Tribe X “occupied territory” all you want, but unless you live on an Indian reservation, you live in the United States. (And even then you still live in the United States.) But engage whatever fever dreams you want, reality be damned.
“Join Us in Our Effort to Force the Zionists to Do Justice to the Palestinians with Our ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanction’ (‘BDS’) Movement Against Israel”
The ideological slant here is similar to the previous arguments: modern Israel is a “settler state” with Israelis as invading “colonists” who “oppress” the “indigenous” populations of Arabs. The nation-state of Israel is committing “genocide” against Palestinians with its “apartheid” policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (Does all this sound familiar?) Therefore, calls for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel are rooted in the same “anti-racist” language seen in other left-wing spaces around the “anti-colonial” world. Pressure to adopt BDS policies are particularly intense on American college campuses, liberal municipalities, and progressive churches, although the movement doesn’t seem to be much in evidence outside of these usual lefty haunts.
This is the way I see it: Israel is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, a high-tech economic powerhouse, and a long-time ally of the United States. Israel punches above its weight and hard (and sometimes dirty) in its security struggles, in a part of the world where nobody follows the Marquess of Queensbury rules of fighting. Compared to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority (or God forbid – Hamas), Israel is almost a paragon of a functioning liberal democratic country.
Israel, and the Middle East generally, is far down my list of concerns – I am not much emotionally invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But when it comes time to vote as an American citizen, I will vote against BDS policies and candidates and in support of Israel. Anti-colonial activists will probably decry this as “racist,” but even the Democratic Party in the American Congress chooses support for Israel over BDS policies. This just incenses progressives on the “anti-racist” left-wing fringe of that party. “FASCISM!” “NEO-COLONIALISM!” But they are out of sync with most Americans on this subject, in my opinion.
As for me, I will gladly buy Israeli products and invest in Israeli companies. I will experience mostly positive feelings when I view the Israeli flag. I do not support their ostracism; I oppose BDS. I have no apologies. Nor do I need to make any.
Let me put it this way: I study in a dojang which teaches traditional Korean martial arts in Ventura, California, and whose techniques have a strong infusion of the more combat-oriented Israeli Krav Maga style. As a consequence, in the front of the school there hang the South Korean, American, and Israeli flags. This is me taking a photo of them and myself –
– and this is how I generally see what the flags in my martial arts studio stand for:
- ROK FLAG: South Korea was born and protected from being devoured by execrable North Korea (and the USSR and Communist China) at the expense of vast American blood and treasure (with the help of others, too) in the 1950-1953 war, before the ROK matured over the next decades eventually into an affluent capitalist democracy which is a global success and stalwart ally of the United States decade after decade. (Communist North Korea, on the other hand, is entirely the opposite.)
- AMERICAN FLAG: The USA is and has been the leader of the free world since 1945, secures the sea lanes and economic order globally, was the lynch pin against the Axis Powers in WWII, the ballast against the USSR and China afterwards, the enemy of host of other scofflaws (Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin), and driver of much of the economic and technological progress in modern times. I am generally proud to be an American, without making too much of it.
- ISRAELI FLAG: And Israel belongs on the same team with the USA and the ROK, for the reasons I already explained.
We all salute those three flags at the start and end of every martial arts class and bow to our black belt instructors. I do so without any difficulties.
So to those pro-Palestinian activists using “BDS” to assert social-shaming and/or peer-pressure activism, coupled with an economic coercion campaign, against Israel and its supporters online and off, and who would denounce the Star of David emblem of that country, I say the following to you: go pee up a flag pole.
It is all fairly predictable. Reparations for slavery, or “stolen” land returned to indigenous populations, or “trans rights” or anti-Israel or whatever else? The thinking among the Woke is monolithic about these issues: affirmative to all of them, and thinking otherwise is almost unthinkable. To speak unorthodox thoughts among the politically inflamed on these topics out loud is to risk being decried as a “bigot,” “racist,” or a “settler.” The result can be to suffer public shaming in the form of intense online peer pressure. “Agree with us or be put in a pit and burned alive!” It is extreme.
There is much the “woke” gain by gathering together on social media to “fight the good fight.” They are cheek-to-cheek in the struggle for “social justice,” if only online most of the time. There is tribal cohesion, and a sense of belonging to a cause larger than yourself. There is the movement: “statements of principles” and calls for “action.” There is language policing and mutual support. There are demands for “accountability” and “change.” But these people are almost unremittingly critical of the United States and its society – the “stars and stripes” national flag is “problematic” and “concerning” and “triggering” – a symbol of what is wrong, not right, in the world. They really don’t like their own country: it’s almost that simple. As political scientist Ruy Teixeira put it in his Substack newsletter,
“Today’s Democrats have a bit of a problem with patriotism. It’s kind of hard to strike up the band on patriotism when you’ve been endorsing the view that America was born in slavery, marinated in racism, and remains a white supremacist society, shot through with multiple, intersecting levels of injustice. Progressive activists’ attitude toward their own country departs greatly from not just that of average Americas but from average nonwhite Americans. Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, in fact, are highly likely to say they would still choose to live in America if they could choose to live anywhere in the world.”
That highly negative description of the United States of America ( ie. “America as a racist dystopian hellhole”) by the populist Left is spot on. But even if these “Progressive activists” with bleak views of America are not so numerous, they make up for it in being loud – especially online. They are overrepresented in journalism, education, and in non-profits and the arts – the verbose folk. I work in education so I see it up close, ugh. Talk about a liberal circle jerk!
But that being said, the progressive Left – online or not – is far from united in what they want. Sure, they share certain general sympathies about race, gender, and class, but they fight viciously among themselves over minor differences in style and policy.
For example, you look at non-profit interest groups like the ACLU or the Guttmacher Institute or Sierra Club, where you find many more of these “social justice warriors” than you would find in the regular population. These organizations are ridden with political infighting between different factions of “woke,” and the fights are so intense the organizations are sometimes said to be almost non-functioning because of them, as reported by Ryan Grim. The same in many public schools and universities. You get these politically inflamed individuals who, in my experience, are such insufferable assholes with their strident politics that most people can hardly be around them for more than half an hour. It is almost as if they are true-believing religious converts to the Church of Social Justice who genuflect at the altar of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and they will brook no disagreement. You go against them, you will be decried as a heretic – or worse. The intolerance of heterodox thinking in these spaces on the cultural Left is strident – think back to those teary teenagers shouting at each other about social media politics in the Behind Their Screens book at the beginning of this essay. The passion is intense and raw. The emotions are so thick you could cut them with a knife.
Speaking of that, let’s return to the imbroglio surrounding J.K. Rowling.
The ardent online members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community demand she be held “accountable” for her statements. They want justice, as they see it; they want their way. It is a power flex. They want Rowling “canceled.” They want her to come begging on her knees for forgiveness.
Not gonna happen. I don’t care much about transexual issues, and think about them even less, in general. The amount of trans people in the USA is minuscule. But I approve of Rowling standing up to these online crybabies. Because they are such assholes, I go against them. And I am not alone.
I don’t even know if Rowling is in the right about “cultural matters,” as Caitlin Flanagan asserts. And I don’t really care. But I do believe Rowling is entitled to her opinion. She need not bend the knee to her critics. Leave JK Rowling alone, ffs.
Others disagree: Rowling must pay for her transgressions, they assert. There is no defense for her or her opinions, they will claim; she is beyond the pale and unacceptable, and there can be no debate. But her example shows this to be crystal clear: If you cross a line, they will come after you. They get to decide where that line is. There will be enraged shouts. There will be angry tears.
But you have to understand the backstory, in my opinion. Many of these online vigilantes, in my experience, are outliers. You think about the handsome high school quarterback or the beautiful cheerleader, and the social justice warriors are often the opposite. They have little social capital in real life, so they try to compensate online. They are often isolated socially. Square pegs which don’t fit into round holes. So they will pick a fight online where they can leverage their voices in a way which will not work in real life. The language on social media is intemperate and extreme; the result is highly emotional judgmentalism. The numerous calls for individuals to be “canceled.” So-and-so is a bad person. They need to be punished clearly and denounced publicly, so that all may learn from their example moving forward. I have seen young people like this with my own eyes.
The important thing is they wage this campaign TOGETHER. “One person alone can only whisper; it takes a group to stand strong.” These wannabe activists online might not even know each other all that well, but they have a cause and an enemy. It’s enough. It is good versus evil, them versus us. The world is black and white, with little or no nuance; so the anger is righteous, and the denunciations are severe. The passion can be unbridled.
But then there is what Mike Tyson said: “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
That is an excellent point.
Maybe it is all just a question of many young people nowadays having grown up online, with resulting overdeveloped technology skills and underdeveloped people skills. Maybe that is why conflict seems to go from 0-60 instantly on social media, and why the emotions are so overheated online and mental health so precarious generally. As Dori Hutchinson, executive director of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University, put it: “I like to describe it as some kids are growing up developmentally delayed, today’s 18-year-olds are like 12-year-olds from a decade ago. They have very little tolerance for conflict and discomfort, and COVID just exposed it.” Yup. Underdeveloped conflict resolution skills to resolve quarrels in person, overdeveloped technology skills to talk shit to strangers online. I have seen few online keyboard warriors who were willing to confront their opponents face-to-face as individuals. They want to do it as part of a group – they get their power from being part of a hopefully large group – it is the psychology of mobs composed of bullies. Individually they are weak. In real life she is that strange girl sitting quietly in the corner. Online she is a lion. With her allies on social media she can call for hellfire to rain down on her enemies, and for punishment and damnation “unto eternity.” She and her compatriots are angry. They want to be heard and feared. It’s about power. It’s a flex.
Personally, I have always thought teenagers in groups like this front strength collectively to mask the essential weakness they feel individually. It is a coping mechanism, more aspirational than real. Again, it’s a flex. “Heresy!” You can’t say that. “Heretic!” Cast them away.
But the fear and anger they wield as a weapon is like that of so many other angry mobs in history – like the McCarthyite anti-communist hysterics, or the “Red Guards” of the Chinese Cultural Revolution – that only has as much power as a society gives to them.
If you refuse to give in to their demands, if you can defy them and survive, if your public reputation survives, they lose their power.
The fever can break; health can return. Society can return to something more resembling stasis.
In the meantime, those around them all too often walk on eggshells. Young people (and not-so-young people) self-censor in contemporary America. Who will be the next to say the wrong thing in a heated conversation on a controversial topic, and be called out for it? Who will fail to say the expected thing, and be called out for it? It is all so negative and combative. The hive-mind on social media is feverish. The censorious progressivism and confrontational anger in activist politics is a real, tangible force – especially on campus, with young women, among the neurotic. I have seen it with my own eyes. It is toxic to everyone involved, but particularly to the “true believers.” Tears, there are hot tears. There is a fever. Politics.
But no fever lasts forever. There will come a compensating move in another direction, and History will pass on from this particular cultural moment. As will most people.
So we shall see what happens with J.K. Rowling.
My money is on her. I suspect she will still be around two years from now.
Let’s check in again in October of 2024.
Eric Hofer once wrote, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” The Harry Potter author is the new devil in the eyes of trans activists, and so they call for the witch trial of JK Rowling. But this particular “devil” is a billionaire and a famous figure, and so I suspect the trans activists will lack the cultural cache to “cancel” Rowling. They most likely will fail to expel her from the cultural commons. But we shall see.
Dear reader, you might think that with some controversial topic – like JK Rowling and transexual rights, or whatever – you would find two sides, with people of differing opinions disagreeing (maybe even drastically so), but agreeing to disagree as they go their separate ways. No so with hyper-partisan social media culture wars. It will all be black and white, with little to no nuance involved. Those against JK Rowling will DEMAND that everyone agree with them, and denounce anyone who does not. I will have it MY WAY or else! Logic and persuasion will NOT be the tools used. It will be emotions and threats. There will not even be a hint that they might somehow be at all mistaken in their judgements. There will be anxiety and rage. There will be tears. The language used will be extreme.
You would think this would be antithetical to a free country where pluralism reigns and persons are free to disagree, but no. JK Rowling must be punished!
It is the language of zero-sum conflict: you are with us or against us. It is the rhetoric of war. In a conflict in which I prefer to remain neutral, they will insist I choose sides, like in a war. (“Which side are you on…”) You are an “ally” or an “enemy.” A “sympathizer” or a “heretic.” These people will hate you for refusing to hate the people they hate. (Is that not the very definition of a zealot and an ideologue?) The entire dialectic will be drenched with tension and belligerence, and anyone who survived middle school will recognize the in-group, out-group dynamic. Today it is JK Rowling. Tomorrow it will be someone else. Maybe you, esteemed reader. Maybe me.
But mark my words: when progressive liberals come together to decide what to do about JK Rowling (or whoever else raises their ire), they will grow emotional and declamatory. An ocean of words will be unleashed and protests will take place, mostly just online. Group solidarity will be called for and demands will be made. There will be meetings which go on hour after hour. There will be arguing, shouting, and crying. They will eventually sign some joint “letter of concern over subject x” or air a “statement of shared principles.” The whole thing will be exhausting. It will get worse and worse in something resembling a sort of collective breakdown.
I will shake my head in disbelief as they melt down in rage and the tears begin to flow. I have seen it before personally, and I will want to stay as far away from them as I can. “Those who lie down with dogs catch fleas,” Ben Franklin used to say. This also applies to social media “flame wars” about JK Rowling or whatever. The world of mature adults is separate from that of the online woke, or at least it should be. But reality is otherwise. Whether posting on Twitter, or working for MoveOn.org or The Guttmacher Institute or ACLU (or in public schools or American universities), plenty of adults on the progressive Left in America are near hysterical arguing over identify politics and declaring themselves the language police in the pursuit of anti-racist, anti-sexist activism –
– their world is a black-hole vortex of negative energy which, in the end, is a waste of time and effort. It is what happens if we “delegate our political and cultural engagement to the angriest sects of American life,” as David French put it. I want nothing to do with them; this call-out “cancel culture” is cancerous: the outbreak of vituperative language on the Internet may well be the harbinger of violence in real life.
So it has been that the cultural Left since Donald Trump was elected in 2016 has been subsumed by the fever of politics. I have not enjoyed being around the feverish at the high school where I work — those relatively few students and teachers hip-deep in all this muck. Maybe it just comes back to the toxic nature of politics and how it is refracted online in America recently. As Jonathan Haidt put it, “Social media is incompatible with liberal democracy because it has moved conversation, and interaction, into the center of the Colosseum. We’re not here to talk to each other. We’re there to perform” before spectators who “want blood.” Henry Adams’s defined politics in America as “the systematic organization of hatreds” back in 1907 in his autobiography “The Education of Henry Adams.” It is of course worse now, both on the “progressive” left and “populist” right. How sad.
So for those who barely even know this “woke” dynamic online exists in the world:
Consider yourself lucky.
I ignore them most of the time, too.
With their temper tantrums they resemble toddlers, no?
But it is not all “gloom and doom.” In watching all these insufferable assholes scream at each other over politics, I console myself that so many ordinary people (“normies”) are paying nowhere near as much attention to the holy trinity of the “race, gender, and sexual orientation” secular religion – they are just living their lives like always. That is the vast majority of Americans, in my experience. That might perhaps be our saving grace. The politically inflamed are the worst – like Yeats described here:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I have to admit all I said about the aggressive troll-like nature of the populist Left could be applied equally to the alt Right, too. But as I live in California I am plagued by the blowhards of the Left, and almost never encounter the blowhards of the Right. I am sure they are “insufferable assholes,” too, alas. Our poor fevered country’s public discourse is plagued by political polemic, ugh.
So to sum it up: leave JK Rowling alone, ffs.
